As I noted several times on this blog, the Bush Administration had one primary criterion for its judicial nominees: whether a nominee was likely to vote in favor of the government in War on Terror cases.

He argues that Pres. Bush's nominations of Miers and Roberts were consistent with this rather than with any conservative philosophy.

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Playwright and director Nora Ephron, 71, is reportedly gravely ill with leukemia and her family is planning her funeral. Films that she has written, such as "When Harry Met Sally," "Sleepless in Seattle," and "You've Got Mail," are well-known. Sympathies to her and her family.

Sunday, June 24, 2012

The Washington Post reports on how Congressmen can profit from the legislation that they vote on:

One-hundred-thirty members of Congress or their families have traded stocks collectively worth hundreds of millions of dollars in companies lobbying on bills that came before their committees, a practice that is permitted under current ethics rules, a Washington Post analysis has found.

The lawmakers bought and sold a total of between $85 million and $218 million in 323 companies registered to lobby on legislation that appeared before them, according to an examination of all 45,000 individual congressional stock transactions contained in computerized financial disclosure data from 2007 to 2010.

Almost one in every eight trades — 5,531 — intersected with legislation. The 130 lawmakers traded stocks or bonds in companies as bills passed through their committees or while Congress was still considering the legislation. The party affiliation of the lawmakers was almost evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, 68 to 62.

The Post also reports on the clear hypocrisy:

Congress forbids top administration officials, for instance, from trading stocks in industries they oversee and can influence. The lawmakers, by contrast, can still invest in firms even as they create laws that can affect the bottom line of the companies.

An old Chinese proverb says "become a government official, get rich." Our Congress shows that that is still true.

To defend the health-care mandate, for instance, the government could have cited past measures such as a 1792 law signed by President George Washington requiring able-bodied men 18 or older to purchase a musket and ammunition. Several scholars, even former president Bill Clinton, have cited the 18th-century law as an example of an individual mandate that happened to be imposed by a president with impeccable originalist bona fides.

“It was an ace in the hole,” said Akhil Amar, a Yale University constitutional law scholar. “You’ve got George Washington signing a bill that helps you. Why wouldn’t you use it?” [Emph. added]

The reason, of course, is that that 1792 law regulates the militia, a power that the constitution clearly grants to the Federal government. No one is claiming any military basis for Obamacare. Akhil Amar, the Sterling Professor of Law at Yale Law School, should know better.

To answer the question in the title, the purpose of regulations is to enrich government officials.

Neither the Public Radio (KPCC) story on this nor the LA Times story on this mention the party affiliation of those arrested. BestPlaces, however, reports that Democrats outnumber Republicans in Cudahy by 69% to 29%. File this under "name that party."

RELATED: The Washington Examiner reported last month on another case of purchasing influence. This one was about a Democrat fundraiser indicted in Connecticut:

Robert Braddock, Jr., finance director for the leading Democrat in
Connecticut's 5th congressional district primary, was indicted by the
Department of Justice for conspiracy charges relating to campaign
donations allegedly designed to influence legislation in the general
assembly.

IN 2003, when CBS was going to air a docudrama that would smear Ronald Reagan as a homophobe, Rock Hudson's ex-lover, Marc Christian, responded with a letter to CBS President Leslie Moonves:

"The notion that President Reagan was a homophobe strikes me as silly beyond
belief. Not only did he have several gay men on his staff when he was
Governor of California, he called my lover, Rock Hudson when he was on
his deathbed just weeks before he died of AIDS and wished him well and
voiced his and Nancy's concern and prayers."

In a rare fit of honesty and decency, CBS decided not to broadcast the show.

Since, however, some smears are too good to let go of, gay activists visiting the
White House last Friday took turnsflipping the finger at a portrait of
Ronald Reagan:

Monday, June 11, 2012

This video was taken during Obama's last two visits to the SF Bay Area. The SF Tea Party was at both to protest (see here and here). The highlight of the video though has to be the Obama supporters trying to explain what Obama's greatest accomplishments are:

Prisoners at Guantanemo Bay prison are being treated to cable television, a new sports center, painting 'life enrichment' classes, and extensive library with a wide selection of DVDs, newspapers, and best-selling books like Harry Potter in a number of languages.

The Obama campaign is busy making unfair and uninformed attacks on Romney's work in the private sector. If turnabout is fair play, then read today's Daily Caller story about Obama's legal career and his profiting from lawsuits that helped cause the housing bubble:

One striking example comes from the president’s 1995 housing-discrimination class action lawsuit: It provided him with legal fees, greased his political donations and boosted his role in Chicago politics.

While he made personal gains, his lead African-American client, Selma Buycks-Roberson, declared bankruptcy in 2001 — and again in 2008 as she received a home foreclosure notice, according to unpublicized federal and city records obtained by The Daily Caller.

The Catholic Church, which should have known better than to make a deal with the devil, supported Obamacare. Now that it is law, Obama says that they will be required to pay for what, in their view, is the murder of innocent children. The mistake that Obama made is that this is not an issue on which the religious faithful, even if they are otherwise 'good' Democrats, can compromise. Here in San Francisco, people representing many denominations gathered today in the shadow of the regional HHS headquarters to express their outrage and their determination, if necessary, to defy the law:

To this crowd, the issue is one of personhood. SF rally organizer, Pastor Walter Hoye, explained that the issue of personhood resonates especially deeply not just with him but with all Blacks who can remember the pain of being denied personhood. The denial of personhood to an unborn child is consequently a viscerally understood outrage:

Pastor Hoye's passion for this issue was awakened with the premature (6 months, 2.1 lbs.) birth of his son which taught him that "the fetus is a person, a living, breathing human being."

Standing outside the HHS building, speakers led the crowd in chants of "We will not, we cannot, and we must not" stand for this HHS mandate. Civil disobedience was widely discussed. This woman below may be smiling, but the crowd takes the message very seriously:

The speakers were impressive. This is Gwen Patrick, currently a candidate for State Assembly in the 52nd district:

Pastor Antoine Miller spoke with passion about Obama's general assault on religious liberty:

Using rich historical detail, Rochelle Conner put this battle into the context of American tradition:

The crowd was enthusiastic:

Nuns were represented too:

This sign reads "Respect the first amendment":

Some in the crowd understood that religious freedom is one of many constitutional rights that are under attack by the Obama administration. Others were perfectly happy having the government control their lives just as long as these particular HHS mandates were repealed. In either case, they now understand that Obama is an enemy of religious conscience.

Wednesday, June 06, 2012

Barack Obama, America's Fundraiser-in-Chief, visited San Francisco today in search of still more campaign cash. Because San Francisco, home to Nancy Pelosi, has a reputation as America's most liberal city, one might think that The One would be safe from criticism here. It is not so. As he arrived for lunch at the Julia Morgan Ballroom in the historic Merchants Exchange Building on California Street, the San Francisco Tea Party was there to greet him (click on any photo to enlarge):

Just a couple years ago, the local SF news media ignored tea parties. Now, they will take a few pictures of tea parties and sometimes their reports are even accurate. Below, KRON interviews Sally Zelikovsky, the founder of the Bay Area Patriots:

After the rally, Sally commented that the media interest in the Tea Party seemed to be at an all-time high. Could it be that the Wisconsin results have finally convinced them that the Tea Party is not going away? [Update: Fund47 has more on the press coverage. Sally writes on the press coverage here.]

There is always a lot of security for the President but, in my observation, this was a first: to protect The One, dump trucks were used to block off the streets:

Naturally, this prompted the crowd to burst out in a chorus of "Dump Obama."

At another moment, a dog was seen being walked toward the Merchants Exchange Building. Concerned that Obama might think it appetizing, the crowd shouted chants of "poor little pup" and "save the dog."

The number of vehicles requires to protect the President is always impressive. Here is an array of San Francisco Police motorcycles that arrived as part of the Presidential protection detail:

Does this make the SFPD California's largest biker gang? Regardless, the use of so many vehicles, replicated along every step of the way, shows just a small piece of how carbon-intensive Obama's travel really is.

The left also appeared. Apparently in sympathy with polar bears (but not with consumers), this crowd wanted to stop arctic drilling:

There was also a contingent of left-wing anti-war protesters such as this woman:

It was just four years ago that there was much Hope for all the Change that America's new messiah would bring. It must be very disappointing to the left that Gitmo is still open and that they still need their venerable "peace" signs. Reality is tough.

Larry from SF was at today's rally. Expect to see more tea party photos at his blog, Fund47. [Update: the permalink to Larry's photos is here.]

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker appears to have defeated Barrett by a larger margin (57% to 42% with 60% counted) than he did in 2010 (52% to 46%). This is a victory for the rights of taxpayers and it happened in a state that Obama won by 14 points. Celebrate.

Saturday, June 02, 2012

In 1790, Edmund Burke wrote about the French Revolution (full text here). As you may remember, the French Revolution, in contrast to the American one, was quite unsuccessful: it led to extreme violence and decades of tyranny. I was struck by the similarities between Burke's description of the revolutionary Jacobins then and Obama and his ilk today. Consider how Burke described the Jacobin approach to public policy:

[T]hey abandon the dearest interests of the public to those loose theories to which none of them would choose to trust the slightest of his private concerns.

In his private life, would a liberal advocate that a person facing bankruptcy solve his problems by increasing spending? Certainly not. But the Stimulus bill is just that on the public stage and was based on nothing more than the "loose theory" of Keynesianism and was pursued over the objections of economists from Monetarist and Rational Expectations schools of thought. Obamacare and "green energy" are likewise supported only by the loosest of theories.

Burke continues:

The public interests, because about them they have no real solicitude,
they abandon wholly to chance: I say to chance, because their schemes
have nothing in experience to prove their tendency beneficial.

In other words, liberal policy prescriptions are so poorly thought out because liberals don't really care about them. They just don't care that previous experiences with economic stimulus or government medicine or whatever don't support their current plans.

So, what do the Jacobins care about? On that point, Burke is emphatic: their goal is raw power:

They proceed exactly as their ancestors of ambition have done before
them. Trace them through all their artifices, frauds, and violences, you
can find nothing at all that is new. They follow precedents and
examples with the punctilious exactness of a pleader. They never depart
an iota from the authentic formulas of tyranny and usurpation. . . . [I]n their desire of obtaining and securing power they are thoroughly in earnest.

Whether it is Dan Rather and his fake documents, or union thugs beating Kenneth Gladney, or Eric Holder's assistance to the New Black Panthers and their mission of carrying billy clubs in front of polling stations, the liberal use of "artifices, frauds, and violences" continues.

My friend, The Gunslinger, tells me that liberals now are more dangerous than ever and that society may have fallen too far to save. I say that the threat from liberals/progressives/Jacobins has always been around. That is why now, as ever, eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.